


Falling

by glorious_spoon



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Rescue, Telekinesis, Unethical Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23805697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: “I have given you an incredible gift,” Harold tells him, settling his hand on Ward’s shoulder, fingers digging in deep. “The least you could do is try to appreciate it.”Or: Ward has telekinetic abilities. It's not really a big deal, until it is.
Relationships: Harold Meachum & Ward Meachum, Ward Meachum & Danny Rand
Comments: 17
Kudos: 72





	Falling

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a group email about Ward and Danny accidentally developing superpowers, although it has... clearly gone far afield of the original concept.

“Hold still, son,” Harold tells him as the needle slides in and the masked lab tech, whose name tag reads _Jared_ —no last names in sketchy basement labs, even if they are nominally owned by Rand Industries—depresses the plunger. It feels like spiders in Ward’s veins, a cold, jittery sensation spreading through him, and even though he knows better he’d jerk away if Harold weren’t gripping his arm like a vice. “Hold still. This is for you. I’m doing this for you.”

It’s the last thing he remembers before the world slides away like he’s falling off the edge of a cliff.

* * *

Later, they’ll tell him that he was unconscious for three days. He wakes in the private Rand infirmary to find Harold sitting by his bed with his hands folded and a look on his face that Ward can’t understand, a cold strange look that vanishes behind a smile when Ward squints at him through the blurry haze of pain still fogging his vision.

“Good morning,” he says. “About time. How are you feeling?”

“Thirsty,” Ward rasps and reaches out—

—he realizes a moment later that his hands haven’t moved, but the glass of water on the bedside table wobbles, then slides forward, untouched, to fall off the edge and shatter on the floor, splashing water across Harold’s pants and shoes. He flinches in anticipation, but Harold just smiles, warm and proud.

“Wonderful,” he says. “Absolutely wonderful, Ward.”

Pain is threading through Ward’s skull again, too much for him to appreciate the rare compliment. He closes his eyes. The world fades into fuzzy blackness.

* * *

The serum, according to Lab Tech Jared, is highly experimental. He’s another one of Harold’s projects: young, staggering under college loans that he has no hope of paying off without his grossly inflated Rand salary, half-worshipful and half-terrified. Ward is almost tempted to tell him to run while he still can, but he doesn’t. Even at eighteen, he’s seen the kind of loyalty a well-padded paycheck will buy, and the last thing he needs is for that to get back to Harold.

Besides, it’s not like he has any room to talk.

As it turns out, Harold’s happy pride is short-lived. A week out of the infirmary, and knocking over that water glass is still the most impressive thing Ward has managed. Two months later, he can flip a playing card over with his hands flat on the table. He can tip a glass of wine into the lap of an annoying dinner guest without touching it. He can slam a door from across the room, if he wants to be flat on his back with a blinding headache for the next few hours. And that’s about it.

“I have given you an incredible gift,” Harold tells him, settling his hand on Ward’s shoulder, fingers digging in deep. “The least you could do is try to appreciate it.”

Ward hasn’t asked about how many people got the serum before him. Whether there was a whole series of failed experiments, missing people who’ll never be missed quietly shipped off when Rand Industries was done with them, or whether he was the first one Harold tried it out on. Whatever the answer is, he doesn’t want to know.

“I’ll work on it,” he mutters, and Harold’s grip tightens bruisingly before letting go.

“That’s all I want from you, Ward,” he says. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted from you. An honest effort and a little appreciation for your fortunate circumstances in life.”

* * *

Vicodin keeps the headaches at bay, but it doesn’t do shit to increase his pathetic excuse for telekinetic abilities to any useful level. After a few terrifying noises about trying out the serum on Joy, Harold seems to forget about the idea. He’s been like that since he came back. Wrong, in odd ways that set Ward’s teeth on edge. He’ll fixate on an idea to the exclusion of everything else, and then just—lose interest in it a little while later.

The violence isn’t new. The unpredictability is, and it’s a hell of a lot more frightening.

But Joy is safe, at least for now, and Ward is going to keep her that way if it’s the last thing he does.

* * *

And then Danny comes back. Danny comes back with a glowing fist that can punch through a brick wall as easily as paper, a _real_ superpower that can’t be brewed in some underground lab. Ward sees the avid gleam in Harold’s eyes as he watches the footage from the hospital, and thinks, with the numb horror that’s been a constant companion for years now, _Oh. Oh, no._

He warns Danny. It may be the first decent thing he’s done for anyone other than Joy in fifteen years, but of course it’s too late and he’s already poisoned the well too much for Danny to ever trust him.

And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t. His responsibility is to Joy, and to Rand Industries, and to Harold and his games. Between that and the booze and the pills, he’s just barely treading water as it is. Danny fucking Rand, with his guileless smile and innocent sincerity and his stupid, hopeless, _infuriating_ obliviousness to how the world works, is not Ward’s problem.

* * *

And then Harold is gone, and Ward has to learn to live in a world without him, and it’s—

It’s not really going that well.

* * *

“That’s why I’m _telling_ you,” Danny says in the back of the company jet, leaning against the wall and smiling like he hasn’t just had his ass kicked across half of New York by his best friend, like he hasn’t had his world tipped over on its side in a dozen different ways in the past few weeks. “You’re coming with me.”

And Ward—well. He’s made much worse decisions in his life than trusting Danny.

* * *

Somehow, the superpowers thing never really comes up. He thinks about mentioning it a dozen different times, but it’s not like it’s actually _helpful_ in any real sense of the word. Ward is more useful with all his wits about him than he is knocked out after flipping a playing card over with his mind, for one thing, and for another, Danny isn’t really that good at hiding his reaction to various Harold-related trivia, and Ward doesn’t want to put up with his sad puppy-eyes when they’re trapped together in a shitty motel room or a cargo hold or something.

Then there’s Jakarta, and the two of them hiding out in a warehouse while a bunch of hired mercenaries hunt for them, because Danny has an incredible gift for pissing people off considering that his personality seems to be made up entirely of sunshine and rainbows.

Possibly the fact that they just blew up half a shipping yard’s worth of illicit property has something to do with it. Again: Danny’s fault.

“Shit,” Danny whispers, pulling Ward behind a wrapped stack of boxes on a pallet. Outside, there’s the sound of shouting and footsteps on pavement. A lot of footsteps. “Should have barred the door, I wasn’t even thinking—”

“Yeah, I did get that memo from literally everything else that’s happened tonight,” Ward mutters back, leaning past the pallet to look at the door. It’s on the other side of the warehouse, which means odds are very good that whichever one of them runs back to try to lock it will end up shot. But, he thinks suddenly, maybe there is something he can do.

It’s been years since he’s tried it, but it turns out that the mental twist is as easy as remembering how to whistle or ride a bike. He reaches out with a thread of willpower, and the rusted iron bar wobbles slightly, then drops suddenly into place across the door. Ward has a sudden flare of triumph, followed by the familiar throb of pain through his temples.

“That’s lucky,” Danny breathes, grinning, and even through the pain Ward grins back at him.

A moment later, an engine roars outside. There’s an incredible _bang_ , and an armored car bursts right through the locked door, tearing metal and spilling armed guards before it even comes to a halt.

They end up having to fight their way out anyway. Or Danny does, while Ward collapses behind the pallet load, bright sparks of pain zinging through his skull and making it impossible for him to even aim a gun. Fortunately, even without the Iron Fist, Danny and his mystical ninja kung-fu skills have it under control.

Danny ends up all but carrying him back to the hotel, and once they’re inside and reasonably sure they’re not being followed, Ward swallows a handful of Ibuprofen and crawls into bed, steadfastly ignoring Danny’s increasingly worried inquiries and prodding fingers at his skull like he’s looking for broken spots.

“I’m serious, Ward, even a minor concussion can be—”

“It’s just a migraine, Danny, Jesus,” Ward snaps, batting his hands away. “It’ll be gone in a few hours. Or at least it will if you leave me the hell alone and let me sleep.”

Danny withdraws with a wounded air. Ward pulls the pillow over his head and doesn’t apologize.

So, yeah. He can be the money and the common sense and the steady gun hand; clearly, he’s not cut out for this superhero shit the way Danny is, glowing magical fist or no. It’s fine. One of them has to live in the real world.

* * *

Somehow, he thought that they’d be done with it all once they were back in the States, which was clearly stupid as _shit_ , because here they are on a windy rooftop in Manhattan, Ward guarding the door and giving directions to Colleen on the phone while Danny fights off half a dozen guys in masks. The worst part of it is how it’s all starting to become kind of routine at this point.

“—through the service elevator,” he’s saying while Danny kicks a burly ninja into the radio array hard enough to send it crashing to the stone-covered rooftop and spins with glowing fists up as two more converge on him, “and be careful, because the guards definitely know we’re here and they’re definitely not happy about it.”

“I’m shocked,” Colleen retorts. She barely even sounds out of breath. Unbelievable. “I’ll be there in five—”

Ward isn’t listening anymore. The fight has spun out toward the edge of the roof in a flurry of limbs, kicks and punches landing faster than he can follow. Danny puts one of the remaining goons down with a hard blow to the jaw, then lands some kind of spinning jump kick, comes down hard on the uneven stone, and—slips.

His arms windmill, suddenly graceless, catching at nothing. There’s a sharp cry that Ward realizes a second later came from his own mouth. Danny doesn’t make a sound as he tilts backward for a second that seems to stretch out for eternity, then vanishes over the edge of the roof.

Ward already knows it’s too late, but he’s reaching out anyway with his hands and his mind, his stupid, fucking _useless_ power that’s never moved anything heavier than a flower vase, reaching desperately for Danny’s falling, flailing body and—

—catching him.

There’s a horrible tearing sensation like he’s being yanked forward hard enough to pull all his limbs out of their sockets at once, even though he hasn’t moved. He can hear Colleen’s voice calling his name and Danny’s name over the phone, tinny and frantic, and then it all fades into background noise.

Danny feels like the heaviest thing in the world, his warm sturdy body and his heartbeat thrumming panicky-quick and beneath him a thousand feet of empty air. And Ward’s grasp is starting to slip. There’s a blinding, stabbing pain that means he’ll be flat on his back for days if he doesn’t stop now, but stopping now is not an option, so he hangs on tight and _pulls_ with all his might.

It hurts more than any pain he can remember. More than anything Harold ever did to him, more than shattering his own bones in a car door, more than every single hangover and all of his rounds of detox put together. There’s blood on his tongue and a high keening noise ringing in his ears and none of that matters because he can _see_ Danny now, hovering absurdly in thin air a yard or so above the roof.

Ward yanks him forward with a final burst of desperate energy. Something inside his skull _gives_ irrevocably, flooding his senses with a hot red wash of agony followed by squeezing blackness. His vision tunnels. He sees Danny collapse hard onto the rooftop, and then—nothing.

* * *

He wakes, slowly and groggily, to the too-familiar sensation of agony smothered under a blanket of heavy drugs. His head feels weirdly fragile, like an egg that might crack open at the slightest movement. Distant beeping and the sharp stink of antiseptic and the prickle of an IV needle in his arm when he starts to move are enough to tell him that he’s in the hospital. Again.

On the upside, he’s not strapped to the bed; on the downside, that doesn’t really matter because, as he discovers when he tries to sit up, he’s too weak to move anyway. Even that much effort makes a sickening pain lance through his temples. He tilts, gripped by a terrible vertigo, and firm hands catch him and settle him back against the pillow. When he finally manages to peel his eyes open, he expects to see Danny sitting there, but it’s Colleen, holding him steady and looking at him with a very odd expression.

Ward blinks at her. There’s a feeling of—

— _hard pavement and empty air and the sharp sound of a scream and then pain, pain—_

—of something terrible, just out of reach. He opens his mouth, his voice a harsh rasp when he says, “Danny?”

“He’s okay,” Colleen says immediately. “I sent him home. He’s been here for two days; he needed to sleep.”

“He fell.”

Colleen lets out a sharp, disbelieving bark of laughter. “ _Yeah_. But he’s fine. What about you?”

“I’m—” Ward shakes his head, then immediately regrets it as streaks of agony ricochet inside his skull. For a second it feels like he might vomit, but then it passes, leaving him uncomfortably aware of the dry cottony feeling in his mouth, the bitter taste on the back of his tongue. “Uh. Thirsty.”

“Okay,” Colleen says, and leans over to pour a cup of water from the plastic pitcher on the tray by his bed, then fiddles with the controls until the mattress starts to fold upward, bringing Ward up with it while Ward blinks at her with the increasing suspicion that he’s actually still unconscious or hallucinating.

He and Colleen have reached a semi-civil truce held together mostly by their mutual affection for Danny, but they’re definitely not _friends_ , which means that Ward has no idea what to do with the look on her face, or with the gentleness of her hands as she helps him upright and holds the plastic cup to his mouth.

“Don’t gulp,” she instructs.

“Yeah, this is not actually the first time I’ve ever woken up drugged in a hospital bed,” Ward rasps. “Or even the fifth.”

Colleen rolls her eyes but doesn’t take the bait. She just holds the cup steady, betraying no sign of impatience as he takes small, slow sips, letting the water sink into the parched tissues of his mouth and warm before running down his throat. Even so, it hits his stomach like a fist; he dry-swallows against the nausea and eases himself carefully back down.

“Uh,” he says warily, as Colleen sets the cup down. “Thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”

She gives him a sharp, unreadable look. “You saved Danny’s life. It’s the least I could do.”

Oh, yeah. That. “Did he—tell you? What happened?”

“He said he fell off the roof and you caught him. By the time I got up there, you were out cold and he was fine. Freaking out,” she adds, “but fine. I’m guessing there’s more to the story.”

“Yeah,” Ward says, then—stops. It’s not even that he doesn’t want to explain. It’s just that the words seem to die on his tongue. He’s thinking, suddenly, of velocity and acceleration. Eighth-grade science shit. A falling body will reach terminal velocity in about twelve seconds, which is just slightly less time than it takes to hit the pavement when falling from the top of an 85-story building. People who fall from that height don’t look human anymore after they land. Harold never had a funeral after his third and final death, but if he had, it would definitely have been closed-casket. Sometimes Ward imagines his corpse trying to resurrect itself inside the body bag the coroners scraped him into, pulverized flesh and shattered bone knitting back together in the putrid darkness. It’s the kind of thought he usually tries to avoid because it makes him want to throw up. Though, as it turns out, not nearly as much as the idea of it being _Danny’s_ body smashed on the sidewalk below.

That didn’t happen. It didn’t. Colleen is honest in the way that Danny is honest, and he’d be able to tell if she was lying about this in any case. But he just. He needs to be sure.

“Can you call him?” he asks. And then, a second later, “No, never mind, you said he was sleeping—”

“I’ll call him,” Colleen interrupts. “He’ll want to know you’re awake.” She lifts a hand; it hovers in thin air for a moment like she’s going to pat his shoulder or something, but instead she just leans over to depress the button, sending the bed back down, then slides out of her chair. She pauses by the door and gives Ward a long, unreadable look. “He’s really pissed off at you, by the way.”

Before Ward can figure out how to respond, she’s gone.

He drifts for a while in a dim, drugged haze, too out of it to really care when a nurse comes in to check his IV, to take his vitals and scratch something on his chart. He might actually sleep at some point, he’s not sure; the next time his head is clear, it’s Danny sitting next to his bed, feet drawn up under him like he’s meditating. He’s in sweatpants and bedhead and looks like an incredible mess: battered, hollow-eyed, with a line of stitches running across the point of his chin, puffy bruising surrounding them. He’s clean-shaven—probably because of the stitches—and it makes him look terribly young.

He’s alive. _Alive._

“Hey,” Ward rasps, and Danny jumps about a mile in the air. So much for meditating. “What the hell happened to your chin?”

“What?” Danny says blankly. Then he reaches up, touches the black bristles of stitches, winces. “Oh. Split it on the roof when I landed. I guess I could heal it with my chi, but honestly that takes so much energy that it’s easier not to.”

“Sorry,” Ward says.

Danny stares at him. “For _what?_ ”

“Uh, for dropping you?”

Danny’s mouth opens, then shuts, and then he shakes his head, unfolding his legs to lean over and tilt Ward’s bed back up again. The vertigo isn’t as bad this time, but he still has to clench his jaw to keep the nausea at bay. “Do you need—you want some water, or something? I just talked to Joy’s assistant, her flight left Sardinia last—”

“Jesus,” Ward sighs, sinking back against the pillows. “You called Joy?”

“ _Yeah_ , we called Joy,” Danny retorts. There’s something wild in his expression that Ward can’t interpret at all. “We thought you were going to die, Ward. They said there was bleeding in your brain and you’d be lucky to wake up at all. So, yeah. We called Joy. She’ll be here in about four hours. Deal with it.”

Ward squints at him. “Colleen said you were pissed at me.”

“I’m not pissed.”

“You kind of look like you’re pissed,” Ward says. “I’m sorry I dropped you on your face. Okay? It wasn’t intentional.”

Danny makes a strangled, furious kind of noise. “I’m not pissed about you dropping me on my face, I’m pissed about you giving yourself an _aneurysm_ catching me in the first place!”

“I’m not apologizing for that,” Ward says, squeezing his eyes shut. His thoughts still feel sludgy and slow, and he’s familiar enough with the feeling of pain buried under heavy drugs to know that he’ll be in agony once they start weaning him off.

He’s never lifted anything heavier than ten pounds with his mind, and the last time he tried he was laid out for days. It’s no wonder his brain feels like soggy oatmeal. He’s probably lucky it’s not leaking out his ears.

Apparently, when sufficiently motivated by blind terror, he can catch a falling adult man and pull him several hundred feet straight up in the air. Good thing Harold never thought to try dropping someone off a roof for him to catch, although probably the only other person in the world who could motivate Ward like that is the one person Harold would never have risked.

As if from a great distance, he hears Danny sigh. “I don’t… Ward, I don’t expect you to apologize for anything. I was worried about you. That’s all.”

“I’m fine,” Ward mumbles, in clear contradiction of the evidence. He opens his eyes again and immediately regrets it when he sees the thoughtful expression on Danny's face. “No, don’t give me that look. I know, I should have told you. It was never—I didn’t think I could do something like that, or I would have.”

“I’m not giving you a look. I just…” Danny trails off. “That time in Jakarta, with the lock, that was you.”

“Yeah, okay, fine,” Ward sighs. He’s too tired to have this argument now, much as Danny seems to be determined to. “I can—move small, light things across short distances, and that's it. As far as I knew. Nothing useful. Harold was so damn disappointed.”

“Harold?” Danny says, like that caught him off guard.

“Yeah, what, did you think I just spontaneously developed telekinesis?”

“I—yeah? I guess? Stranger things have happened.”

“True,” Ward says, “but not in this case. That was all dear old Dad and his quest to make me a better man.”

It comes out bitterer than he means it to. Danny looks at him, that sharp curiosity softening into something gentle and knowing. He reaches for Ward’s hand and squeezes it tight. Two of his fingers are splinted, also probably from Ward dropping him on the roof like a piece of luggage, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. “You’re a better man than he could ever have hoped to be.”

“That bar is so low that it might as well be subterranean,” Ward mutters, trying to free his hand. Danny just hangs on.

“I mean it,” he says with the blunt sincerity that Ward would never, ever buy from anyone else. “And I—just, thank you. For catching me.”

Ward sighs and twists his hand in Danny’s so that he can squeeze back, careful of the splints. Danny’s fingers are warm, callused, strong. _Alive._ He’s alive, he’s here making worried, earnest faces at Ward instead of cold and broken in a body bag, and the relief of it hits Ward like a sudden punch to the gut.

He clears his throat, then says, “Okay, you’re welcome, but I should warn you that if you try to hug me, I’m probably going to puke on you and ruin the moment.”

“Yeah, okay,” Danny says, laughing, but he doesn’t let go.


End file.
